


Souls at our Sides

by EssayOfThoughts



Series: MCU Maximoff Oneshots [83]
Category: His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Daemons, Alternate Universe - Fusion, Avengers: Age of Ultron (Movie), Codependency, Daemon Touching, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-22
Updated: 2016-06-22
Packaged: 2018-07-16 12:45:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,094
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7268773
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EssayOfThoughts/pseuds/EssayOfThoughts
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Wanda remembers taking the tram with Pietro and their parents, sparrowhawk-Estrie and cat-Chaya on their shoulders watching out of the window. No more. No tram anymore, no parents anymore, no more sparrowhawk and cat.</p><p>Now they are lioness and leopard.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Souls at our Sides

**Author's Note:**

  * For [TobermorianSass](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TobermorianSass/gifts), [SecondStarOnTheLeft](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SecondStarOnTheLeft/gifts), [wandasmaximoffs](https://archiveofourown.org/users/wandasmaximoffs/gifts).



**i.**   
Wanda’s Chaya snarls out of her scarlet with her every casting, seeking every freedom she may have with each swirl of scarlet. Her claws rake, her teeth glint, her roar shakes the very stones of Wanda’s cell.

“Shh, shh,” Wanda soothes, stroking Chaya’s unnatural mane with scarlet-tipped fingers. “Shh, shh.”

Pietro’s Estrie (fast and dangerous as a witch-demon, even when they were but minutes old) spins out of his stilling silver and dissipating blue, snow leopard paws soft on stone.

“Calm,” she tells him. “We must be calm.”

This is the cost of their powers, and they see it, realise it, when, two days after their powers fully show through, they are allowed to see each other. Pietro is walking slowly and unsteadily, Estrie fading away into his blue every time he blurs. Chaya pacing beside Wanda is half-intangible as Wanda tries to maintain the flow of scarlet.

This, they see, is the price. Half their shared split souls half-taken from them.

 

* * *

 

**ii.**   
It takes effort for both of them to keep their Daemons near. For Wanda she must pull her scarlet to her constantly, tug it out of the air, warping through space and time and dimensions into physicality at the tips of her fingers, bringing Chaya with it. It is  _ hers _ , the scarlet, undoubtedly, but it is tiring to pull scarlet into the air, over and over and over, unceasingly, to twitch and bend and twist her fingers without pause or break, to keep Chaya warm against her side, curled with Pietro’s Estrie against their legs.

For Pietro it is effort to stay  _ still  _ now, his blue shaking through him bright and bleak as a summer sky. It always feels like a lurch to trip into and to fall out of it, to feel Estrie suddenly stripped from him and yet with him, sprinting alongside him in the blue. He learns how to relax into his speed, how to coil it up inside him when he halts so Estrie doesn’t dissipate at a moment’s notice.

They learn how to use their gifts in tandem, and their Daemons, Pietro carrying Wanda, Wanda’s Chaya leaping out of the scarlet Wanda conjures, Estrie snarling and snapping out of Pietro’s dissipating blue as he spins to a stop.

They learn how to fight with their Daemons near and with their Daemons gone. It makes them ache, the effort they must expend to keep their souls with them.

 

* * *

 

**iii.**   
It’s easier when Wanda’s scarlet ties their minds together. Suddenly Chaya is in their minds even when she is not in the world with them, pacing through the cathedral arches of Wanda’s, waiting at the brink of the bridge to watch into Pietro’s. Suddenly Chaya can leap into the world at a moment’s notice and it takes Wanda so much less effort to pull her soul into the world.

Estrie is still kept from them in this until Wanda’s scarlet, piecing through Pietro’s mind, finds the winds that spin and dance around his tree. Pietro learns to tuck his speed into them, make the winds turn into a howling gale at the brink of his mind, whisking past where Chaya sits and ruffling her mane. 

With his winds tamed to his mind, it is easier to be still in the world.

Once more, Estrie and Chaya curl at Pietro and Wanda’s feet.

 

* * *

 

**iv.**   
_ Unnatural _ , say the techs and medics, watching the twins training. Their terriers and dachshunds and dobermans stay close at their heels, even those with snakes looped over their shoulders or spiders in their hair or geckos behind their ears watch them warily out of the corners of their eyes.

None of them rest easy around the twins, Daemonless or with their Daemons curled together at their feet, Chaya’s golden fur and unnatural reddish mane next to Estrie’s silver and grey and white and bright bright blue eyes.

(They are, Wanda has noted before, the precise same blue as Pietro’s.)

(Pietro in turn pointed out how the auburn touch of Chaya’s mane matches her hair.)

(They are each twinned to their Daemons as well as each other, and they are glad to have them there as comfort.)

 

* * *

 

**v.  
** When battle comes it is true they are not ready. Wanda’s Chaya paces nervously when she is present, worrying the techs, Estrie presses firmly against Pietro’s side anchoring him as much as she is able.

All the same they  _ want _ to fight, want to fight the Avengers, but most of all Stark, he who orphaned them, who led to them growing up so fierce, who changed their souls from dancing around as birds and martens and foxes and wolves and made them into Chaya’s maned lioness and Estrie’s strong snow leopard.

“Wanda,” Pietro says, barely a breath, his hands twisting in hers, Wanda’s little fingers twitching little spills of scarlet out to keep Chaya present.

“We fight,” she says, and curls her fingers shut, Chaya coiling back inside like blood into a vein. Pietro plucks her up, gives Estrie a moment’s notice before she is vanished into his blue. 

He sets her by the doors, and Wanda hides in an alcove, not even daring to pull Chaya forth for comfort. “Go,” she murmurs, eyes darting outside, and Estrie leans against Pietro’s legs, pushing him to run. “Fight.”

 

* * *

 

**vi.**   
At the brink of the bridge between their minds, Chaya watches Pietro’s great tree. The winds in his mind are calmer as he sprints and it is easy to watch through, to see the monkeys and hummingbirds of his thoughts leaping and darting through the lianas of his mind.

(Wanda sees him knock over the archer and almost laughs.)

Wanda is ready all the same when the Captain comes striding out of the hall, waiting to confront Strucker and his doberman. The pointer at the Captain’s side, a rangy chocolate brown creature, nose up, shoulders forwards, docked tail straight out in a precise line as she points to where Strucker and his Daemon stand.

It is easy to step forward quietly, as quiet as Chaya on the prowl, and easy, so easy, to send Chaya roaring outwards in a bolt of scarlet aimed for the Captain’s chest.

(Wanda tries not to hear the whine the Captain’s Daemon gave at their bond suddenly being stretched so far.)

 

* * *

 

**vii.**   
There is a magpie hopping restlessly on Stark’s shoulder when Wanda makes her way down to guard the sceptre. Strucker is gone now, always a coward, already captured by the other side, and his orders - to stay back from the fighting, to guard the sceptre - have long been ones considered and later discarded by the twins. There is little the techs can do about it, when Estrie and Chaya warp in and out of reality as they do.

(They are so much less vulnerable now.)

Chaya materialises at Wanda’s side as she sends scarlet darting out, wrapping around the magpie-daemon, warping into its mind and the mind of Tony Stark. Tony Stark goes stock still and Wanda can see the nightmare playing out behind his eyes (sees the Captain’s pointer dissipate into so much Dust as he dies). 

They both see how Stark’s mind changes and warps under the influence of her scarlet, nightmares rising up from deep beneath the armoured layers of his mind.

_ No, _ she thinks as she feels Pietro draw near.  _ I want to see what happens. _

 

* * *

 

**viii.**   
There is something silky about Estrie’s fur now, when Pietro runs his fingers through it. Like when he was small and held his arm out of the window of the tram, the way the wind would skim around his skin, glide with soft-strong pressure over his flesh. That is how Estrie’s fur feels now, like the wind, like his speed. Pietro wonders what differences Wanda has noted in Chaya, or if there were none at all.

He digs his fingers into Estrie’s fur as they walk so slowly around Novi Grad and tries to let her anchor him. 

Wanda is beside him, her fingers plucking at his sleeves gently, using the motion to hide the scarlet falling from her fingers, keeping Chaya at their sides. There is something worrying her, he can feel it, something working through her mind, making her wonder and question, making her rethink their old plans for vengeance.

“Not rethink,” Chaya murmurs when she sees the turn of his thoughts from her perch on the bridge between his mind and Wanda’s. “Re-plan. Soon, soon something will come to help us in our aims. We must be ready. Fear controls even those called heroes.”

This Pietro knows to be true. They are to be heroes for Novi Grad, for all of Sokovia, to try to save it from its constant war, and it was nothing but fear of Stark, fear of losing their family all over again, that led to their volunteering and their powers and their plans.

 

* * *

 

**ix.  
** This creature, this Ultron, sets Pietro on edge.  _ It has no Daemon. _

_ Everyone _ has a Daemon, from young to old, even  _ Stark _ , the most heartless man on the planet has a Daemon, a hopping little magpie as irritating and carrion-fed as the man himself. The only ones who don’t are the dead, and Pietro does not like the idea of being led by a dead man- robot- … whatever Ultron is. 

Wanda seems less unsettled and even Chaya pads forward, sniffs at the steel of Ultron’s body. Estrie presses against the back of his legs, as though begging him to run them all away from here.

 

* * *

 

**x.**   
It is Wanda’s decision to ally them both to Ultron, and Pietro would never go against her. He and Estrie had decided this when they were ten years old, Wanda curled in his arms and mouse-Chaya curled in squirrel-Estrie’s grip, in fitful sleep. 

“We must protect them,” Estrie had whispered, the brick dust barely hampering her breath. “There is no one else who will.” Pietro had nodded, tucked Estrie under his chin, where Chaya’s mouse-claws would be touching Wanda’s hair from within Estrie’s safe grasp. 

“We will protect them,” Pietro had murmured back. “We will be the strongest we can until only Wanda is stronger.”

In the end they both know: Wanda is far stronger than they will ever be.

 

* * *

 

**xi.**   
Pietro knows Wanda can see his tension, that she does not need to hear the murmured words passing between Estrie and Chaya to know: Pietro hates running for Ultron, hauling for Ultron, hates losing Estrie over and over and over for each small moment as he sprints on whatever task Ultron sets.

It is different for Wanda, and they both know it. Each chance to openly use her power, to pull Chaya roaring and snarling to the fore is like hope and happiness, having her soul back at her side again. 

But for Pietro each use of his speed takes Estrie from him, and while he will gladly do it for Wanda and Chaya or when Estrie asks it of him he hates to do it for any other.

“It is only for a little while,” she says softly, her thumb running gently over Pietro’s hand.

“Only until our vengeance,” Chaya says, in between grooming Estrie’s silver fur.

Wanda’s hand - carefully, tentatively - reaches out to touch Estrie’s fur. “I promise,” she says, and Pietro shivers into absolute calm, absolute purpose. “No longer than that.”

Pietro’s hand reaches out, finds Chaya’s mane, combs fingers through it as gently as he had when their Daemons had first settled. “I know,” Pietro says. “I believe you.” He can feel himself in absolute calm, knows Wanda is likewise. To touch another’s Daemon is love and trust and surety, and when done as a promise…

This is a promise that will not ever be broken.

 

* * *

 

**xii.**   
The ship is a riot of Daemons even after most of the normal humans have been run out. Klaue’s jackal Daemon is frantic after Ultron cuts off Klaue’s arm - suddenly she is as scarred as Klaue now is, limping on three legs - and his man’s monkey is a snarling, hooting, vicious thing from his shoulder. 

Ultron  _ laughs _ .

 

* * *

 

**xiii.  
** _ I don’t like him _ , Pietro thinks, and knows the thought registers in Wanda’s mind when Chaya snarls so much more viciously than she needs to. (Pietro loves how Chaya snarls - a great rumbling sound, vicious and certain and as inescapable as an avalanche.)

_ Only a little while _ , Wanda promises, sending her scarlet at the spider Daemon of the woman in black, at the Captain’s pointer, at the godling’s great bear.  _ Cave Bear, _ Wanda thinks.  _ They are extinct. _

The Cave Bear curls up almost as though hibernating as Thor shakes through the visions Wanda gives him. The woman in black’s spider Daemon curls up in her collar as though dead, the Captain’s pointer is collapsed on his chest where he has stumbled to an eventual halt.

Pietro still running sees them, sees the scarlet soft around them like Chaya’s purr, and smiles to see his sister’s handiwork.

Then there is a flash of pain, a vision of some kind of hawk, and Pietro is sprinting anew.

 

* * *

 

**xiv.  
** Pietro spins out of his sprint, Estrie spilling forwards sniffing for Chaya and finding traces but no great lioness there. Wanda is shaking at the arrow pressed to her forehead and Estrie’s claws pin down the hawk even as Pietro kicks the archer through a window. 

_ “You hurt our sister,” _ Estrie snarls, her claws digging into the feathered chest of the bird, and only Pietro’s sprint outside, Wanda in his arms, keeps her claws from tearing out it’s Dust-made heart.

 

* * *

 

**xv.  
** It hurts, it  _ hurts _ , and Chaya is snarling and snuffing around Wanda, trying to comfort even while handling her own side of the pain. Wanda keeps her fingers twitching, keeps pulling out more and more scarlet to keep her lioness present, keep her soul and strength fully beside her and not just in Pietro.

“I will  _ kill _ him,” Pietro says. Wanda heard what Estrie had said to the bird. Wanda knows him to be utterly sincere.

“No,” Chaya says. “Do not become murderers for us.”

Estrie growls even as she nuzzles against Chaya’s cheek. “Do not ask that of us. We would not ask it of you.”

“The big one,” Wanda says. “The last of them.” Scarlet is coiling in greater quantities around her fingers, more than the trickle Chaya needs.

The lioness digs her paws into the mud. “Take her,” she says to Pietro. “I can sprint this.”

 

* * *

 

**xvi.**   
They are, all four of them, close enough to see Banner’s bushbaby dissipate into Dust as he transforms into the giant green Hulk.

“Like us,” Estrie and Chaya say simultaneously. “They are like us.”

_ Yes, _ Wanda thinks, _ and we have hurt them _ .

 

* * *

 

**xvii.**   
Chaya is warm at Wanda’s side in Seoul. In the grand cathedral of Wanda’s mind Chaya paces, claws digging through the stone floors to find the Synagogue beneath. 

_ Is it right we do this _ , Chaya asks.  _ Hurt those so much like how we are? Banner is… he is like Estrie and Pietro, losing his Daemon each time he uses his power. Should we fight those that could be further family to us? _

Wanda paces through her mind, fingers trailing over wooden pews, finding the Hebrew words of the Synagogue hidden in the wood.  _ But they are not family to us _ , she replies.  _ They fight against us. _

Chaya looks up to the candles far above, burning gold against the dark cavern of the ceiling.  _ Yes _ , she says.  _ But are we sure we fight on the right side? _

 

* * *

 

**xviii.**   
There is Dust in the Cradle, they can see it.  _ Enough for a soul? _ they wonder.  _ Enough for a Daemon? _

Whatever it is, though, Wanda’s scarlet can touch it, Chaya can pace down the link she opens up to see, to see-

_ Annihilation. _

Chaya is at the brink to Pietro’s mind in moments, calling his name and Estrie’s. They are at their side in an instant, Estrie pressed warm to Chaya’s side, Pietro scanning Wanda’s face, asking silently, over and over  _ what is wrong, what happened, what’s happened, tell me- _

“The end of the world is come,” Chaya growls into Estrie’s fur, and the snow leopard’s posture changes. Head down, shoulders up, eyes - blue and burning - fixed on Ultron.

Wanda’s fingers flick Doctor Cho free of the sceptre’s hold, and then Chaya is pulled up inside, a bead of gold and scarlet warmth in Wanda’s heart as Estrie becomes blue and Pietro speeds them away.

 

* * *

 

**xix.  
** Chaya is roaring pure rage in the train, Estrie in Pietro’s blue does not care she is not truly present.  _ Ultron will end the world _ .

None of them are willing to let this happen.

“Wanda,” Ultron entreats. “It doesn’t have to be like this.” Hands open, eyes bright, tone asking.

_ Daemonless. Soulless. Heartless. He cannot be trusted. _

“What choice to we have?”

 

* * *

 

**xx.  
** “This isn’t a choice,” Pietro says to Wanda as they follow the Captain. His pointer sniffs once each at Chaya and Estrie before - completely unruffled - following along behind.

“Gracie,” the Captain says. “You don’t have to be so stern with them.”

“Bucky isn’t here,” the pointer replies. “Who else is gonna watch your back?”

 

* * *

 

**xxi.  
** This  _ isn’t _ a choice, and Wanda knows it as they fly towards the Avengers’ tower. When the choice is between losing one another or losing friends, it was never a choice. When the choice was between losing their home or finding a new one, it was never a choice. Now, with the choice between losing their vengeance or losing everything, it isn’t a choice.  _ Protect family, protect home, protect the world. Vengeance can be taken later _ .

All cats are patient on the prowl, waiting for the right moment to strike. All of the lionesses work together to feed the pride. All mother snow leopards fight fiercely for family. 

Estrie’s purrs are rumbles so loud they shake the plane from where she is pressed against Pietro. Chaya, flickering in and out of physicality, watches everything with golden eyes.

“It doesn’t have to be a choice,” she says. “The Daemonless are wrong. The Daemonless would end the world.”

Wanda’s hands comb through Chaya’s mane. “It is our job to stop him.”

 

* * *

 

**xxii.**   
The body in the Cradle tears out of it, magenta skin, teal-green eyes, metal framing the contours of his body.  _ Fight _ and  _ Flee _ battle within Pietro’s breast to see Wanda so close to this unknown, until the creature is hurled towards the window.

Suddenly, in a shower of Dust, she is there.

 

* * *

 

**xxiii.**   
“He has a Daemon,” Estrie murmurs, watching her coiling in the new creature’s hands, a serpent this moment, a bird the next, a mouse thereafter.

“Ultron did not,” Chaya replies. The Daemon becomes a lioness, a cave bear, a magpie, a bushbaby all in short order as they look over the crowd watching them.

Wanda and Pietro’s fingers knot in their Daemons’ fur.

“I am sorry,” the creature says, and something in they four relaxes.

 

* * *

 

**xxiv.** **  
** _ I don’t like this _ , Pietro thinks, as he starts to speed through the city. He can feel Chaya prowling around where Wanda stands, scarlet spiderwebbing out through the city, warning everyone. Chaya can sprint down every path the scarlet takes, so long as there is scarlet there, but Estrie, Pietro’s own Estrie, is trapped into his blue, feeding his speed but forbidden from running with him.

“It’s all right,” she murmurs when they pause for a moment. “This, like protecting Wanda, is necessary.”

There is nothing they will not do for Wanda, if it is necessary.

 

* * *

 

**xxv.**   
They do not think they have ever seen Chaya so perfect as she is now. She is a  _ lioness _ meant for the hunt for the fight, meant to snarl and growl and roar out her battlecry. 

She is there in every moment of Wanda’s scarlet, her claws lending the rich red her strength, and Pietro cannot doubt his sister’s surety.

“Come back for me when everyone else is off, not before, do you understand?”

Pietro teases, Estrie nods.

“When everyone else is off,” Estrie says, rubbing cheeks with her sister.

“We will find you in the end,” Chaya promises, her golden fur in Estrie’s silver.

 

* * *

 

**xxvi.** **  
** Wanda feels the bullets tearing into Estrie’s fur as she skids out of Pietro’s blue, leaping up to take the brunt of the barrage instead of Pietro. Estrie can survive it. Estrie is Dust and Pietro’s blue, and Pietro’s speed and in all of that Pietro’s ability to heal faster than anyone.

It doesn’t stop Wanda from screaming, keep Chaya from roaring.

The scarlet is warping out of her - out of  _ them _ \- in a great cloud, ripping and tearing and disintegrating into nothing the Drones around them. All their pain, all of Estrie’s, all of Pietro’s echoed from his Daemon, all of it echoing and echoing in their shared collective headspace.

_ NO! _ Wanda and Chaya scream in unison.  _ NOT OUR FAMILY! _

 

* * *

 

**xxvii**   
Wanda can feel her brother’s heartbeat, feel him curled around Estrie, trying to find the strength to warp into his speed before Estrie fades to Dust, her heaving sides already shimmering with the gold of it.  _ Don’t die _ , she can feel him thinking.  _ If you die I die too, please Estrie. _

_ Run, _ Estrie whispers back.  _ Make me blue again _ .

Wanda’s sight is nothing but scarlet. She cannot see where she is going, is following only behind Chaya, warm and present and strong at her side. Scarlet is dripping from her fingers like blood, like the blood she means to take as price from the bloodless being that did this.

_ Soulless _ , Chaya thinks.  _ Daemonless. Without heart or help _ .

Together they think:  _ We shall kill him for this _ .

 

* * *

 

**xxviii.**   
Ultron is crumpled in the tram. Wanda remembers taking it with Pietro and their parents, sparrowhawk-Estrie and cat-Chaya on their shoulders watching out of the window. No more. No Novi Grad anymore, no parents anymore, no more sparrowhawk and cat.

Now they are lioness and leopard.

“Wanda,” Ultron says, and his voice is scared, concerned,  _ gentle _ .

_ Maybe he has some soul after all. _

“If you stay here, you’ll die.”

Chaya’s tail is flicking slowly, steadily, side to side like a cat about to kill as she sits beside Wanda. Her mane is vast, fills out around her head like a crown and mantle, making her a monarch of life and death. “Estrie was almost made Dust by you,” Chaya says.

Scarlet is coiling out of Wanda’s twisting palms, shining balls of it, twisting chains. “Pietro almost died because of you,” Wanda says.

“Please-” Ultron says.

Scarlet delves and tears into Ultron’s chest, as strong and sharp as Chaya’s claws, reaching and ripping with absolute certainty.

“Please-” Ultron says, and Wanda cannot fathom  _ why _ . He should know. He should understand what it would do to them to lose any part of them. No begging will gain him mercy.

His core tears free of his body, and Wanda sees Ultron’s red eyes touch on his scarlet-wrapped core.

“Andraste-” he says, and it is something like a sob.

Out of his core crawls a small beige moth.

 

* * *

 

**xxix.**   
Wanda walks to the Lifeboat with Andraste held carefully in two cupped hands.  _ Love _ , she thinks, to try not to hurt the tiny moth-Daemon, but she cannot love Ultron after this, not in any fashion. She can see, in the church, Vision’s Daemon, huge and warping, so far from Settling it can take forms beyond imagining, fighting each and every drone sent to it. 

Chaya, pacing at Wanda’s side sends off the drones that try to come for Andraste.

“We need to know,” Chaya says, calmly, certainly, metal dripping from her teeth, “That he is  _ dead _ .”

Wanda can feel Andraste’s wings, as soft as feathers beating against her hands.

“She is scared,” Wanda says. 

“ _ Ultron _ is scared,” Chaya says.

 

* * *

 

**xxx.**   
“What is that?” Pietro asks in between resuming his sprint from one end of the room to the other. (He cannot be still now and they all of them know why. If he is still Estrie returns. If Estrie returns now she will not be healed. If Estrie is not healed she will die, and will take Pietro with her.)

Wanda cracks her fingers open just the least amount, lets him glimpse the small brown-beige moth in her hands. “Ultron’s soul.”

“He lives yet,” Chaya says. “But soon she will breathe her last.”

 

* * *

 

**xxxi.**   
It is only a few minutes later that Andraste’s wings flutter their last, and all that is left of her is Dust.

**Author's Note:**

> As a note, I did decide on the Daemons and names for (almost) everyone, and specific details for all of them:
> 
>   * Pietro's Estrie is a snow leopard as is well established. They're silver-grey like Pietro, and incredibly loyal and fierce for family - the females especially, and as Pietro's Estrie is female it felt fitting. As we see, she cannot be present when Pietro is sprinting, her Dust becomes his blue.
>   * Wanda's Chaya is a maned lioness, again as we see. There is [a precedent for maned lionesses](http://africageographic.com/blog/unravelling-the-mystery-of-mmamoriri-the-maned-lioness/), and with Wanda's own particular nature I felt like Wanda's Daemon should be unusual twice over - female Daemon for a woman, and a maned lioness. As we see, she is only present in Wanda's scarlet, which must be present for her to be seen.
>   * Steve's Grace (or "Gracie" as we see him call her) is a [German Short-haired Pointer](http://www.burkesbackyard.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/German-Shorthaired-Pointer.jpg). Large and very clever dogs, they can be over-energetic and even hyperactive as pups though they do mellow out with age. When trained properly they are excellent pointers, and their gangly legs made me think of Steve before the experiments. I decided that, in this 'verse, Grace didn't change when Steve was given the serum, despite speculation that she would.
>   * Though we don't see him, I agreed with another fic that gave Bucky's Daemon as a wolf. I don't have a name for her, but I do think that after all that HYDRA has done to them both they are Separated.
>   * Tony's Daemon in this we see, she's a little Magpie - small, highly intelligent corvids with rhymes regarding what they signify (most notably "one for sorrow", which is especially true for the Maximoffs). They are attracted to shiny things (like Tony is) and (like Tony) all corvids are remarkably intelligent and capable of utilising tools beyond what other birds can do. I'm not entirely settled on a name for Tony's Daemon, but I bounced around the idea of calling her Friday. I did decide, however, that she is very averse to people after Tony's neglect at the hands of his father and his treatment when he was imprisoned by the Ten Rings.
>   * Thor's Daemon is a [Cave Bear](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cave_bear),  _Ursus spelaeus_. Like another fic (I think the same one that have Bucky a wolf Daemon) I felt that Thor should have an extinct Daemon (that, or a creature from Asgard but I could find jack all about Asgardian animals). Cave Bears are huge creatures which went extinct towards the end of the last Ice Age. Despite their huge size they are generally thought to have been reasonably peaceful, as bears go, and were herbivorous, rather matching how Thor is - huge and hulking and dangerous when angered, but not malicious. I named her Röskva, for the mythical servant of Thor.
>   * Bruce's Daemon is, as we see, a Bushbaby that is absorbed into him when he Hulks out. I did consider an Aye-Aye for him (they have ominous omens attached), but Bushbabies won the vote. I never named Bruce's bushbaby, but I felt it would be something small and sweet, like Pearl, Rose, or Lily.
>   * Natasha's Daemon is a spider. I'm still torn between Black Widow or Golden Orb Weaver for Natasha, but I do know that he is called Alian (and the the reason for Natasha's patronymic in this 'verse), and that they are Separated.
>   * Clint's Daemon is a Chicken Hawk, after the final chapter of [Hollow Your Bones Like a Bird's](/works/632488/) which has Clint comparing the Avengers to different birds in therapy. She is a perfectly ordinary Daemon (not Separated) and her name is Waverley.
>   * Vision's Daemon as we see is UnSettled and UnNamed, but she is Separated. I don't know what she would Settle to, nor what Vision would name her: he is too young yet to be sure.
>   * I can't decide on Rhodey's Daemon (I want to say some kind of dog but I have no idea which), and I can't name her either. She is, I have decided, quite an ordinary Daemon, much like Clint's.
>   * Sam's Daemon too I have not decided on or named, but I do like the fics which have her a bird of some kind. I have decided that, in this 'verse, she changed after Riley died.
>   * _Yes_ that is actually Ultron's Daemon we see at the end there. Andraste is a specimen of [Hemiceratoides hieroglyphica](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hemiceratoides_hieroglyphica), a Madagascan moth which feeds on tears. Ultron keeps her hidden inside his bodies out of fear she would come to harm and thus harm him.
> 

> 
> Comments are much appreciated!


End file.
